Documentation subcommittee

The Documentation subcommittee aims to promote accessibility to information on homeopathy that is held within libraries and documentation centres in Europe. A secondary aim is to save work in documentation centres through co-operative projects.

Our first goals were to produce a Guide to Homeopathic Libraries and Information Centres and a Thesaurus of Key terms in Homeopathy. These are available online:

International Guide on Homeopathic Documentation Resources (IGHDR) - This guide contains a list of 40 homeopathic libraries with details of their type of contents, borrowing procedures etc. It is not restricted to Europe and includes libraries throughout the world. We would like to make it comprehensive, so if you know of other libraries with a large homeopathy content please contact: C. Vandeschoor.

Homeopathic Thesaurus - The Thesaurus is a list of keyterms to be used for indexing purposes. It has hierarchical lists for English, French and German terms. This was built by members of the Documentation subcommittee so that indexers of the homeopathic literature would use only the key terms given in this thesaurus. This would also help people searching the literature. It is hoped the thesaurus will become the standard indexing guide in homeopathy, as an addition to other thesauri of medical terms such as MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine).

Joint list of theses and dissertations - This list contains the joint homeopathic dissertations and theses holdings of several participating libraries. In the current list 637 dissertations and theses can be searched full text on basis of bibliographical data. The list can be searched for bibliographical data or for keywords by consulting the ECH Homeopathic Thesaurus (see above).

List of journals on homeopathy and on CAM - This list can be found here (homeopathy) and here (CAM).

Further projects include

Standardisation of the indexing method using the Homeopathic, MeSH and AMED thesauri

Development of an extensive list of links to websites on homeopathy and CAM. This new list will be made availbale shortly.

A joint Journal Holdings Database of libraries in homeopathy will be made available shortly

The documentation subcommittee consists of people who are working in the field of homeopathic information and documentation. If you are interested to join us or receive information please contact the co-ordinator of the subcommittee. The working group meets once a year at different locations.